commas and ampersands

Well, I'm back. My little blog-cation has served its purpose, and it's time to re-enter the world of the communicative. It's been a full few weeks, with Esther's visit, more hours at work, the semester gearing up to the end and winding down at the same time, and the various and sundry day-to-day things that happen.

There were a thousand little things that I thought of to write about while I was away from lj-land (at least, away from the posting side; I kept up with everyone else's journals), but, of course, I didn't write them down, so they're lost in the netherworld of the space in between my brain and my keyboard, never to be recovered. Most of them. Some of the ideas will likely resurface at some point--I find that I mull over certain entries for quite some time before writing them--but many of the trivial, fleeting ideas are gone.

That's okay, though. Not everything that passes through my head needs to find a voice on the internet.

So, what's new? Well, my laptop's keyboard is pink now. I have pictures of my own computer, but they're still on my camera, so in the meantime, you can look at that and envision. My favorite is that the backspace key is now a magic wand. The stickers are removable, so the fun won't last forever, but in the meantime, it's very exciting. ;o)

Mariah and I are discussing our options for our apartment, the summer, and the fall. We need to come to a decision in the next few days, and suffice to say, I may be having to make different arrangements than I'd originally planned for.

I leave for a weekend in Calgary tomorrow morning. I'll get to see the show that Colin composed the orchestrations for (and which numerous other people that I know are in, but that's all kind of secondary for me). I'm ridiculously proud of him, and having heard the various pieces in their electronic incarnations as demos, I'm excited to hear them as done by real instruments played by real instrumentalists. It's the biggest project he's ever done, and he's certainly put the work into it and should be very, very proud of what he's done. I know I am. :)

We'll have the usual kind of holiday weekend. Colin has both Friday and Monday off work, which is absolutely fantastic, so I don't have my usual dilemma of having time while he's at work. Usually, when that happens, I try to schedule coffee with my girlfriends, but I'm completely okay with not having time for that. We'll have Easter dinners with both our families (Saturday brunch with mine, Sunday dinner with his), two performances of the Easter show, Easter Sunday morning service, and Monday to just chill and hang out. I fly out on Tuesday, but not until early evening, so since Colin's back at work, that's when I've scheduled my meetings and things to get done. Bank meeting, internship meeting, and probably coffee with my mom (y'know, since my parents paid for this flight...).

Today--my birthday!--has been pretty normal. It's a regular Thursday, with school, work, more school, more work. The girls in the Public Affairs office made me cupcakes, but that's about it. I work tonight, and I still have some packing and cleaning to do when I get home, so it'll be a short night before I head to the airport in the morning.

I'm very excited. Since our visit last month got cut short by about 6 days, I really need this weekend.

Anyway. Hopefully there'll be lots of pictures. Lori promised to have her camera on hand. :)

Since all important decisions come to the flist, here's one for you:

My 60-day trial of Microsoft Office (that came with my computer) expired yesterday, and I'm trying to decide what to do.

I have OpenOffice on the computer, which is compatible with Word, Excel, Access, and Powerpoint (and has a couple of other programs that I'd probably never use--do I really need a program to write scientific formulas? Probably not!). I like the Word 2007 interface better than OpenOffice (which is basically the same as Word 2003), but that's not too big a deal.

OpenOffice doesn't have the equivalent to Microsoft Publisher, though, which is the other program that I want to have. I use Publisher for programs and fliers often enough that it comes in handy to supplement my only-semi-existent graphic design skills.

I'm not even looking at the standard version of MS Office right now--it doesn't have Publisher, so if that's the main dealbreaker (with the interface of the 2007 version of Office being more of a bonus), then I can just use OpenOffice. I can get MS Office Pro, which is what I'd be looking at, for $80 through school (and I need to see if that's good for more than one computer, because if it is, both Colin and I can use it), but I want to know if anyone knows of anything OpenOffice-esque that I can get for Publisher. Is there any good, free (or cheap) software out there, preferably compatible with MS Publisher, since I go back and forth between the school computers and my computer for some of these projects?

Also, on a slightly related note, does anyone know how I can record cell phone conversations? Again with my thesis being interview-based, I'd like to record as many of the conversations as possible. I have a digital recorder for in-person conversations, but I'd like to see how I can record any phone conversations, since I'm hoping to be interviewing people all over the country, and as much fun as it would be to fly everywhere and do the interviews in person, I think it'll be cheaper to get whatever I need to have in order to record them.